


Bread Not Roses

by darkchives



Category: Aquaman (2018), Justice League (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Ireland, Newgrange, Sharing a Bed, all irish info is from a two day excursion had by the authors, do not hold them accountable, post aquaman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 01:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkchives/pseuds/darkchives
Summary: The ocean is salty. Arthur wants real food and a vacation, and Mera needs to try bread.





	Bread Not Roses

Arthur knew that being king would be stressful and boring and involve a whole lot more diplomacy than he would ever want to practice, but the reality hit him harder than he thought it would. You could fight and train and try your best, but some days just truly sucked. This was one of those days. 

“The Dead Sea Queen is requesting an audience, excuse me, has been requesting an audience for months.” Vulko was hovering, as he was wont to do, at an ungodly hour around Arthur. Mera had abandoned him for a meeting about Atlantis’ new outreach program and he alone was facing the onslaught of kingly duties. 

“I’ve been king for 2 weeks,” Arthur grumbled.

“Orm became somewhat distracted by the machinations of war and let slip to the wayside many of the king’s lesser duties.” Vulko pointed to the old-fashioned crate full of scrolls and letters sealed with thick clumps of wax. 

“Why in the hell are there scrolls?” he groaned and took a long sip of the coffee that was beginning to cool. He’d made the procurement of a coffee machine one of his top priorities as they navigated the complexities of him living in Atlantis full time, but even that could not dull the pain of a long list of official correspondence. 

“Old habits die hard in the smaller kingdoms.” Vulko shrugged and pulled scroll after scroll out for Arthur. 

“The most urgent,” he explained. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You know what’s most urgent, Vulko? Me not doing this. That’s what.” He sighed and stretched from the throne. 

“Sir, you can’t just--”

“Relax, dude. Also, please never call me sir. That was weird.”

“Fine. But you have to go through these scrolls. Then, some time for you to go ashore could be arranged. You keep saying how vast the ocean is, but as I understand it, the above-water lands are vast as well. Perhaps you should travel. Minus the whole getting an entire town in Italy destroyed, this time.”

Arthur smiled fully for what felt like the first time all morning. “Now that doesn’t sound so bad.” He held out his hand, plopping back into the throne. “First scroll, hit me.”

* * *

The whole morning passed much quicker than Arthur expected, and before he knew it, he was shaking off dust from his kingly robes to get some lunch. Mera’s meeting had ended, and she met him on the way to the palace kitchen. She smiled cheerily while grabbing a wrap of kelp and raw shrimp. “Sandwich?”

Arthur shook his head ruefully. “I need you to know how this isn’t a real sandwich. Like, it’s fine, but nothing compares to bread.”

Mera shook her head. “Still not sold on bread. And your food on land isn’t so great. There was that gorgeous rose thing. Looked lovely, but tasted a little unripe.”

Arthur swallowed hard. “Yeah, but normally food is better than... yeah, I don’t know what was up with that market.” He cleared his throat and accepted the proffered kelp wrap, trying not to laugh. “But about land...Vulko said I could get out of here for a couple days, take a break. Would you, I don’t know, want to tag along? There would be bread and not roses to eat.”

He was surprised when, for a moment, he held his breath waiting for her reply. They’d not had long to talk about everything that happened before they were swept away by duties and tasks laid out for them by what felt like a horde of helpers whose sole task seemed to be giving them more to do. 

“I’d like that.” She smiled up at him as they walked. “It’s a good thing too. I was thinking I might need a little more convincing not to kill you in your sleep and take the kingdom as my own and wipe your precious land off the map.” She laughed and took off down the hallway.

“What?” he stumbled after her, her walking pace now far outstripping his. “Mera, wait, wait, are you serious?” She disappeared into the labyrinth of the Atlantean castle seconds later, but her laugh still echoed in his head. 

Arthur was still sorting out how the whole Atlantean court worked, and why precisely Mera was a ward and still here, when she reappeared with a bag on her shoulder. “So, when are we headed out?”

* * *

“Ireland? We call the sea surrounding it the Waters of Eire.” Mera perused the map Arthur had splayed out on his childhood bed, peering interestedly at place names.

“Eire? I’m surprised that translates. That’s what the island is called in Gaelic.” 

“There are legends about merpeople who are not descended from Atlanteans of old. Maybe they’re the ones who provided the name.”

“Guess that would make sense. So, what do you think? I’ve never been and it’s supposed to be beautiful. My friend Bruce chartered us a plane and found some swanky accommodations, so we’re good to go.” As he spoke, Arthur realized he had no idea how Mera liked to travel. The last time they were on a plane, she’d jumped out. He cleared his throat. “Not sure if this will affect your thinking, but absolutely no unauthorized sky-diving this time.” 

Mera cocked her head quizzically. “Is that not how you get out of planes?”

Arthur started to answer and thought better of it. “You know what, nevermind. If you want to go sky-diving we could make that work.”

Mera grinned. “You’re an idiot. Let’s go to Ireland. There’s some amazing monuments I’d like to see.” 

They were on the plane within a few hours of Arthur making the call to Bruce. He didn’t always see eye to eye with the guy, but he sure could get the ball rolling lightning fast on just about anything. They were just settling into the posh private jet when an attendant handed him a letter. 

_Arthur,  
I’ve had the plane stocked with clothes for you and Mera so you could blend in a little better. Scales are not quite en vogue. _

_Bruce_

Arthur looked up to see Mera already waist deep in the closets at the back of the plane, wondering at everything within. 

“Surely you’ve got shit like this where you’re from. You’re royalty or whatever,” he muttered. 

“We have our finery and the land has theirs.” Her voice was muffled. She stepped back and he saw for the first time that she had already changed into a deep green dress unlike any he had ever seen before. 

“Wow,” he whispered under his breath. 

“Your turn. Let’s see something.” She pushed past him to his closet and pulled out the first suit.

“Absolutely not.” Arthur dodged her hand as it reached toward his wrist and deftly smacked away the next. 

“Arthur, you’re being ungrateful,” she laughed as she chased him from one end of the plane to the other, suit tucked confidently under one arm. 

“I’m going shopping as soon as this bird lands.”

“What bird?” 

“The plane, like, it’s...nevermind. Plane, when it lands, means me, going shopping.”

“So you like shopping then? Do you have a job to get money?”

“You people have an economy down there right? You know about money procurement?” 

Mera glared. “I know how economies work. I want to know if you personally have some comically menial job I can snicker at.”

Arthur coughed. “I’m between jobs at the moment.”

The glare turned to an evil grin. “Oh that is much better. I’m going to message Vulko,” she said, pulling out an Atlantean device.

Arthur gently grabbed her wrist. “No no no you don’t, let’s keep this one between us.”

The grin grew wider. “Little princeling never worked a day in his life!” Mera crowed. 

“Hey! I helped my dad with...stuff, and then I had a side hustle of being a superhero, so it’s not like I was drinking all day at the bar. I was busy.”

“Oh?”

“Sometimes it was. Whatever.”

The attendant appeared and asked them to take a seat for landing. Mera stuck her tongue out at Arthur from across the plane’s aisle. 

Arthur was no aviation expert, but the landing strip seemed wildly short for a plane of that size. It was neither paved nor wide enough to be anything but a backroad. Surely that’s not the strip he thought seconds before they landed with a violent bang that would have thrown them from their seats had they not been securely fastened. The attendant seemed unphased. 

“Master Wayne sends his apologies. This is a prototype currently in the testing phase.” 

“A test plane? He sent us up in a test plane? You tell that furry boss of yours that-” Mera pulled him out of his seat and out of the freshly open doors into the Irish countryside before he could properly threaten Bruce for that stunt. 

“He’s gonna get the ass whoopin of a lifetime for-” The sight of Mera stopped him short. She stood just steps from the plane, stock-still, staring unblinking out into the rolling green hills. 

“You still with me?” he stood shoulder to shoulder with her, taking in the cool, damp air. 

“It’s just so,” she breathed deeply, “beautiful.”

“Still want to kill me and take over the kingdom and become a harbinger of death to all land dwellers?” 

“Jury’s out,” she whispered. 

It felt good to stand still. Arthur’s shoulder felt warm where it touched Mera’s, and the air was fresh and chill. “Nothing like breathing water.” 

“No,” Mera agreed, still a bit spellbound. 

Arthur sighed and looked around. “So is there a bus we can catch or did he just chuck us in the middle of nowhere?”

Mera shook her head a little, returning to reality. “Neither. I believe that’s our ride.” Mera pointed across the small field to a more substantial road where a Porsche sat parked by the roadside. 

“Damn Bruce, okay, I get it,” Arthur said, eyebrows raised. They made their way to the Porsche. The keys were in the ignition. “I guess he’s trusting my ability to drive on the left side of the road.”

Mera frowned. “He’s lucky you remembered. Also, it’s insane that you people have to make rules about which way to drive. At least in the water there’s an additional dimension to operate in.”

“Yeah yeah. You getting in or not? It’s about to go real fast.” 

And sure enough, it did. They sped down the narrow Irish roads, following the preprogrammed GPS directions on the dash of the Porsche and ended up in front of a small but ritzy hotel on the outskirts of Dublin. Arthur parked the Porsche in the valet line and turned only to find Mera with her hands around the throat of the poor Valet. 

“Mera!” He slid over the front end of the Porsche, denting the hood on the way and pulled Mera off of the valet. 

“He was trying to steal the car,” she panted. She tried pulling away from Arthur, but stopped when she saw the other uniformed people getting into other parked vehicles. Arthur released her and pulled the valet to his feet. 

“She’s- uh- not from around here. No hard feelings.” He smoothed the man’s vest out and clapped him on the back. 

“Sure,” he winced. Mera mouthed sorry as they stepped inside. 

The interior was sleek and modern, and they didn’t even make it to the desk when an attendant stepped in the way and said, “Hello, Arthur. Bruce left instructions for you to have the Executive Suite. Follow me.” Arthur raised an eyebrow at Mera but followed anyway. She shrugged in answer, cast a confused look at the bellboy carrying the luggage, but fell in line behind Arthur. 

Four flights of stairs later, the attendant presented Arthur with an ostentatious key and wished them a good day. The bellboy plopped the luggage inside the door of the suite and left. Arthur and Mera were alone. 

The suite was lavish. A small sitting room with a balcony overlooking the countryside greeted them immediately upon entering, and to the right was a massive bedroom with king-sized bed and a very fancy bathroom. 

“So, this is...nice,” Mera ventured. 

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Arthur answered quickly. They stood in silence, taking it all in. 

“Look--” they both started in unison, making eye contact and quickly dropping it. 

“Go ahead,” said Arthur. 

“You first,” Mera insisted.

“Um, okay. Well, I’m sorry if Bruce...overestimated the nature of, um, our relationship. I mean, like, I’m fine with it, but if you’re uncomfortable, or, um, not feeling it, we can absolutely grab another room. Or whatever you’d prefer. You can keep the fancy bathroom, I’ll get the commoner’s suite or something.”

Mera smiled, a little awkward. “That’s kind of you to say, Arthur.” 

Arthur, sensing the awkwardness, shook his head hurriedly. “I’ll just run downstairs and book that other room. Bruce is an asshole, I’m sorry about this.”

Mera interrupted. “Kind of you to say, but not necessary, Arthur. I was just going to say, you don’t have to spend all your nonexistent job money on a fancy hotel for me, but being royalty, I’m not complaining. Roughing it is fun, but so is...not roughing it.”

Arthur turned and closed the distance between them, taking Mera’s face in his hands. “Is this roughing it too?”

He felt her smile more than saw it as she leaned up to kiss him. “No, it’s not, idiot. Took you long enough.” 

Arthur couldn’t contain his grin. He picked Mera up and spun her around. Taking her hand, he pulled her toward the bed. “Tired from traveling?”

“Please. Tired from traveling is spending eight hours guiding a shark through the dark ocean. I’m actually feeling pretty good.”

“Glad to hear it.” He leaned in again, meeting her lips easily. For a long moment, everything fell away: the stress of kingship, the adventures of the last year, the age-old fear of inadequacy. This long moment felt like enough. And then it felt like more than enough, as Mera, still kissing him, shoved him back into the plush blankets. Through the kissing, he murmured, “You know what? I’m feeling pretty good too.” 

Mera pushed him further into the sheets. “I can tell. Now unzip this absurd surfacer dress for me and we can see where things go.”

He obliged, and found that the way things went were altogether great.

* * *

Arthur dragged himself out of bed in time to buy more clothes for he and Mera and returned in time to receive a text from Bruce. 

_Reservations, Dax Restaurant, 8pm._

Arthur had no idea what kind of fancy dining he’d been signed up for, but he was certain that’s not where they’d be going. 

“What are you feeling for dinner, Mera?” he asked. 

“Whatever you’re feeling,” she responded. 

“I think I asked you first.”

“Nope.” She snatched the clothes from the bags on his wrist and disappeared into the bathroom.

“What does that even mean?” he shouted over the sound of running water. _It means it’s up to you to not screw this up,_ he thought to himself as he changed out of the more than slightly out of place Atlantean clothes. She had eaten an entire rose, so the bar was not all that high. He flipped open the hotel’s suggestion book and picked the first place he saw. O’Neill’s it was. 

“We’re going to O’Neill’s. It’s authentic, according to this small and probably fake advertising book,” he shouted to the bathroom. 

“What does authentic even mean? Like, existentially. I know the meaning of the word, thank you.”

Arthur blinked in confusion. “When it comes to Irish food, I have absolutely no idea.”

“What will it all taste like? Will it be spicy? I’ve heard authentic food is often supposed to be spicy.”

“You know, in this case, I’m pretty sure it will not be spicy. That’s not really their thing.”

They drove at more manageable speeds into the heart of Dublin, despite Arthur’s every instinct telling him to floor it. Mera seemed smitten with the city, despite her reservations about humans and their smoke-belching bastions of society. They arrived at the restaurant just shy of eight and perused the menu for what seemed like an eternity. 

“I’ve never had lamb. What is it like?” she asked, pointing to the menu as she spoke. 

“So that’s not just a surface thing,” he mused. 

“What?”

“Nothing. It tastes like lamb. Not sure what to compare it to. Get it and find out.” he repeated the same advice, because nothing they had under the sea could compare. 

She ordered lamb and potato stew, and he a pot roast and two pints of Guinness. He dug into the pot roast, not realizing how hungry for meat he had been during his time in the ocean. She was more tentative and took a small spoonful of the stew. Arthur was in the middle of his first sip of Guiness when he saw her face screw up into a pained expression. She swallowed the stew quickly and immediately downed her entire pint. 

“What in the hell?” He jumped when she reached over her plate to steal his glass. She fanned her mouth. 

“You said this wouldn’t be spicy!” She downed his glass and looked feverishly around the restaurant. 

“It shouldn’t be?” He leaned over and grabbed a spoonful of her stew, bracing himself for whatever hellfire hot sauce they’d slipped into her meal. The stew was about as mild as one could get without being bland, but there was one standout flavor. Pepper.

Arthur roared with laughter despite Mera’s vicious, “spice” induced glare. 

“Mera, It’s pepper. You can’t get any milder than that.” He toned it down as people from other tables were beginning to stare, but could not stop laughing. 

She continued to stare accusingly. “The rose wasn’t spicy. Is bread spicy? What is pepper and why is it so spicy?”

He swallowed more laughter and tried to explain. “Pepper is from a kind of plant. It’s used to make food taste more interesting. Your rose...was kind of bland.”

“You’re saying that they would put PEPPER on a ROSE? I know I said it was unripe, but that seems unfair.” 

“That really isn’t what I was saying, but you can put pepper on many other foods.” 

“Answer my question about the bread.” 

Arthur proffered his dinner roll. “This is bread. It’s a roll, to be specific. Try it. If you think it’s spicy, we can go somewhere else and get you a salad or something.”

Tentatively, Mera nibbled at the roll. “It’s so...fluffy.”

“Right? It’s amazing.”

“I didn’t know food could do that.” 

“Bread is what we use to make a sandwich. So imagine...um, imagine some kelp and other sea vegetables, and then imagine them on top of this glorious fluffy cloud.”

Mera nodded slowly. “I can see why that would be appealing.” 

Arthur sighed. “The real tragedy is that it would just get soggy and horrible under the sea. So if I’m going to be king, I have to give up sandwiches.”

“I won’t let that happen. You’ll be allowed to the surface for bread at least on a monthly basis. You deserve that much.”

“If you ever want to tag along on the bread runs, feel free.”

Mera smiled. “Let’s see how much more pepper I can handle first.” Calling for another beer, she bravely set back into the stew.

* * *

The next morning, Arthur and Mera woke up to a knock on the door and a note. It was in Bruce’s handwriting, and said, 

_Arthur, screw you for not going to Dax. Do you know how much those reservations cost? Your next vacation mission, if you choose to accept it: Catch the bus that should be arriving in 10 minutes. It will take you to the most magical thing a person can see on December 21. Have fun, kids._

“Bruce is so damn cryptic. We’re never calling him again,” Arthur muttered. 

Mera looked up from the note to the bus. “He knows how to run a show, that’s for sure.” 

In 10 minutes’ time, they’d thrown on enough clothes to be presentable and hopped on the bus that stopped outside the hotel. It was still dark, but they quickly clambered aboard. The other passengers stared. Arthur, wearing a suit jacket and pajama pants, and Mera, wearing her newly adopted deep green gown, blinked back at them. The bus held several nationality’s worth of tourists. And they were headed for a place called Newgrange. 

The tour guide ushered them to a seat and shushed them when they turned to speak. “Please keep quiet during the lecture. You’re about to enter a sacred place, a place of history and mythology,” he scolded in a light Irish accent. 

Arthur shrugged at Mera and kept his mouth shut. The tour guide provided some background information about what Newgrange was. (Mera had to be shushed several times as she tried to hurriedly ask for context from Arthur. “I’ve never heard of a passage tomb,” she hissed to Arthur. “Neither have I,” he hissed back. “Now listen to the nice man and maybe he’ll tell you.”) 

“The ancient passage tomb of Newgrange only sees daylight inside the inner chamber but once a year. And you, friends, are the people who get to witness it. Congratulations on winning the lottery, and let’s enter the history!” 

The bus parked and they walked quietly to the entrance of the tomb. There was murmuring throughout the small group, but they could mostly only hear the wind whistling through the countryside and the guides insisting that they watch their heads on the low stone entrance. 

Seconds later, Arthur smacked his head on the doorway as Mera nearly doubled over in laughter. An exasperated glance from the guide told him that he was neither the first nor the last to leave a bit of dignity at the entrance of the tomb. 

"Is it not eerie, to tour a tomb?” Mera whispered as the darkness of the passageway engulfed them. 

“This hasn’t been in use for a long time,” he whispered back. Something about the narrow, dark space disinvited conversation. His shoulders nearly touched either side of the passageway, which narrowed until they were finally to the chamber. 

Arthur felt the weight of years pressing down on his shoulders. Mera seemed to feel the same, and no longer tried to ask questions. It felt just as ancient, if not a little sadder and less frightening, as the trident’s final resting place. It felt, as the tour guide had said, like history and mythology all wrapped into one dome of rock. 

The other tourists crowded in and they were instructed to back up against the walls of the tomb and look out through the passageway they’d used to enter. At first, there was nothing to see beyond the diffuse dawning light, and then a knife of sunlight cut through into the chamber. It was the sun, greeting the stone for the first time in a year, on the shortest day of the year. Mera gasped at the dawn’s clarity. Arthur’s hand found its way to Mera’s shoulder and squeezed it, and soon enough her hand covered his. Everyone stood in complete silence, letting the beam of light wash over them. A minute ticked by, slow and yet too quickly gone. The light slid above the door’s lintel and into the ether, and everyone slowly let out a breath they didn’t realize they’d been holding. 

The spell was broken, and the tourists were subsequently ushered out of the tomb into the day. They were quiet for a long while as they walked along the grounds of Newgrange. They had old things in Atlantis, Arthur knew that, much older than anything he’d ever seen, but he and Mera were still taken in by it. 

Mera stopped him at the rear of the tomb in front of a large rock with swirly triskels etched into the surface. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. 

“Arthur,” she said. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ve decided I’m not going to kill you in your sleep and take the kingdom for my own.” 

“Is that right?" 

“Yeah.” 

He could feel her smile as he leaned down to kiss her. They stood in the quiet shadow of Newgrange until he heard the group leaving. They stepped back onto the bus, and back into the Irish countryside. 

“So, more bread before we dive back into the sea?” 

“It’s even better than roses.” 


End file.
